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Lucas Cruikshank is the creator of Fred, a web-based series on YouTube. According to Wikipedia:
“On October 16, 2008, Cruikshank’s FRED channel became YouTube’s most subscribed channel overall with 585,506 subscribers, and altogether his Fred channel has received over 22 million channel views and over 125,000,000 video views since its launch May 1st, 2008.
Cruikshank has turned his web popularity into commercial success signing deals to advertise products through product placement in the Fred series. The “Zipit” text messaging device has been featured in several episodes. Cruikshank appeared in a commercial advertising the text messaging device, which aired on MTV, Nickelodeon and ABC Family.”
Forrester released an interesting report last week about measuring social media applications. Even in an economic downturn, the popularity of social applications has never been higher. Their report finds that companies approaching social media with clear objectives and track more meaningful influence metrics beyond visits and page views are driving profitable business results.
Some of the examples the report include:
- Accuvue Facebook app got 500,000 people to share “winks” resulted in a 17% increase in sales
- Dell’s Twitter channel has sold over half a million dollars in hardware
- An e-commerce sites that added customer reviews boosted sales 26%
- Tech company generates a dozen leads a week from their company blog
Here at Digital Influence Group, we’ve seen that marketing in social media environments is generating business results for a lot less money than other traditional marketing or advertising method. For the past couple years, this has just been a smart business idea. Now with a global financial crisis squeezing marketing budgets and driving consumers online to do more research before making a purchase, participation and measurement of social media is a necessity.
This is one of our favorite events of the year. The discussions this year will be about helping IT companies increase the influence and effectiveness of their marketing during a weakened economy. You’ll hear keynotes from Jonathan Zittrain author of “The Future of the Internet - And How to Stop It” and Tom Davenport author of “Competing on Analytics: Turning Potential into Performance“.
If you are not familiar with them, ITSMA (IT Services Marketing Association) is an association for marketing executives who provide technology-related services and solutions.
ITSMA CEO Dave Munn recorded this podcast with additional details on the event and the keynote speakers:
If player doesn’t appear, you can link to the recording here.
Videos of the keynotes from the Inbound Marketing Summit last month in Cambridge, MA have just been posted online. The first video is the opening remarks from HubSpot CEO Brian Halligan. Brian describes the concept of inbound marketing and makes a strong case for why businesses need to adopt these practices. This clip also includes the presentation of the Inbound Summit Awards where Digital Influence Group is recognized for our Burma It Can’t Wait campaign for Fanista.
The second is the keynote from David Meerman Scott. David is the author of “New Rules for Marketing and PR” and this speech summarizes the key principles from this very popular book. David delivers a fun and informative presentation so if you haven’t seen him before, this is one you don’t want to miss.
Digital Influence Group and our sister company Racepoint Group sponsored last night’s Boston’s Social Media Club event. The topic of the event was “Corporate Social Responsibility in the Digital Age” and we had an outstanding panel to discuss how social media can help companies communicate their CSR initiatives and generate support for their causes.
Thanks Doug Haslam for the photo
Adam Zand was there and captured several of the discussions on Utterz:
As with any good social media event, the attendees were pretty active on Twitter during the discussion. Here is a link to the Twitter posts tagged with #smcboston
Since the Social Media Club was able to co-locate this meeting with the New Marketing Summit, we were able to hold our meeting in one of the luxury suites overlooking the field at Gillette Stadium. In addition, a few of the folks arriving early were able to take a tour of the stadium. Here is a photo from one of the earlier tours. Yes, that is the visitors locker room… and yes that is David Meerman Scott holding a Dolphins helmet and our own Kelby Troutman wearing a Colts helmet. A couple of losses and everybody jumps ship.
Digital Influence Group has been selected as a finalist in this year’s MITX awards in the Best Use of Social Media category for our BurmaItCantWait project. Working with our client Fanista, we created this campaign to raise awareness and generate support for the US Campaign for Burma. We developed the identity and branding for the campaign that includes a microsite featuring 50 videos from Hollywood celebrities endorsing the cause, a YouTube channel, and a Facebook app, and an aggressinve social media outreach program.
The winners will be announced at the award ceremony in Boston on November 19.
If you are not familiar with the MITX Awards, it is the “largest and most prestigious awards competition in the country for interactive and web innovations and celebrates the best creative and technological accomplishments emerging from New England.” For more on MITX and these awards, visit www.mitx.org.
It happens every time, when economic times get tough companies look to cut marketing budgets first. A study of CMOs conducted this summer by Epsilon found that this recession will be no exception, but with one interesting exception. Budgets for digital media are expected to increase.
In an environment of intense budget pressure, marketers need to invest in the channels that are the most accountable and have proven to generate the greatest results. But this doesn’t mean plastering the web with banner ads - old methods of shout advertising are still going to generate old results. Digital media has become more effective because it is more personal. Consumers and B2B purchasers will spend more time researching purchase decisions and the internet offers them all the content they could ever want plus opportunity to get advice from others who are already customers. A company’s ability to understand and participate in these conversations to help their customers become their advocates are the ones that will thrive in a recession period.
“Senior marketing executives anticipate further cuts but are confident that they will be able to manage their budgets by focusing spending where it will have the greatest impact. For most, that means a change in marketing channels. As the overall marketing pool diminishes, the budget for interactive and digital marketing is dramatically increasing, while that for traditional marketing continues to shrink”
If you missed the Inbound Marketing Summit in Boston last month, many of the presentations have been posted on Slideshare. You can check out the agenda page for a directory of all the presentations available.
I was on the “Inbound Marketing Challenges & Solutions from the Trenches” panel. There were no slides in this session, but they did post the video:
We are excited to announce today that Michael Smith has been hired as President of the Digital Influence Group. Michael joins us from Publicis Modem Media where he was President of the Western Region. Michael has been leading interactive agencies for almost ten years working with some of the biggest brands in the world. His extensive experience in all aspects of interactive and social media marketing has led to award-winning campaigns for clients that include American Express, Microsoft and Wyeth. You can read more about Michael’s background in our press release.
For a closer look at Michael and what his addition means to the future of Digital Influence Group, check out this new podcast. W2 Group Chairman Larry Weber sat down with Michael to discuss his thoughts on DIG and on the increasing importance of social media in marketing today:
This is an important step forward for Digital Influence Group and we are very excited to have Michael on board - please join me in welcoming him to the team.
We are excited to announce that we’ve won an award from the Inbound Marketing Summit for our work on the Fanista “Burma: It Can’t Wait” campaign.
“The Inbound Marketing Awards recognize innovation and achievement in the use of inbound marketing techniques. Submissions were evaluated for completion and clarity, inbound marketing usage, business results, and creativity. Three winners were selected that exemplified a great use of inbound marketing tools and techniques to market a product, company, or brand.”
We worked with Fanista to create this campaign to raise awareness and support for the US Campaign for Burma. There’s more details on this project here and here.
The award will be featured at the Inbound Marketing Summit on September 8 in Cambridge, MA. The event featuring keynotes from Seth Godin and David Meerman Scott is sold out, but you can still participate on the event’s free live web conference.
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